


Never Is A Promise

by Yahtzee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Friendship, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many years too late, Harry realizes you can't get over something until you admit there's something to get over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Is A Promise

He’d had no idea. Had Harry suspected for one instant that Ron didn’t know, hadn’t always known, it would never have come up. But they were both flying blind.

“I suppose you’ll be getting out there again,” Ron said as they took a pint together in a Muggle pub. (Harry preferred those pubs, by and large – he found it easier to relax when nobody recognized him.) “Dating.”

“Oh, God.” Harry made a joke of it, but the misery in his voice was sincere. “That’s going to be – not fun. Starting over.”

Sometimes he thought half the reason his marriage to Ginny had lasted as long as it had was because he’d dreaded this very prospect. They’d always been a volatile match, with passionate highs but incredibly deep lows. By the time Lily had been born, Harry had already known he was more emotionally connected to his wife’s family than to his wife, but had still been trying to convince himself it would work out. By the time Albus had gone off to Hogwarts, Ginny had taken a flat of her own – but he’d still thought they might make another attempt at patching things up.

By the time Albus became the first 11-year-old Seeker since his father – and the first ever for the Slytherin team – they’d signed the papers that made Harry’s wedding ring fizzle around his finger and fall into so much gold dust.

It was better now; he and Ginny got on well enough as friends, it turned out. Neither of them had asked anybody in the Weasley family to take sides, and last month at Christmas Harry had received his annual fuzzy knitted jumper (orange this time.) As rough as this had been on the children, the divorce hadn’t come as a shock. Everyone was going to get through this, Harry thought, and ultimately be happier than before. But that was just patching up the life he’d already had. Rebuilding – creating a new life – that still felt very far away.

Ron looked as awkward as a former brother in law might when he said, “Don’t suppose you want me and Hermione to fix you up with someone.”

The thought of it made Harry want to groan. “Please, don’t.”

“Figured.” Ron took a deep drink. “I suggested it to Hermione the other day. The look she got on her face!”

Harry half-smiled as he stared down at his glass. “I can imagine.”

“Still, it’s not like you’re going to need much help.”

“How do you figure?”

Ron gave him a look. “Bloody hell, Harry, you’re – Harry Potter.”

“Sort of old news.”

“You’re on the fifty galleon note!”

“What do you want me to do, wave money around?”

“Don’t knock it. Could work, you know.”

“Not with the kind of women I’d want to date.”

“Getting picky now, are we?”

“Shut it.” Harry had started laughing, and the Muggle Guinness was having its effect, which meant he was off his guard.

Ron said, “Guess you really never availed yourself of any, you know, groupies.”

“Groupies?”

“You know you could’ve done. Or did you and you just never told me?” They’d never talked much about sex, which Harry figured was a natural effect of marrying your best friend’s sister. “You and Gin didn’t tie the knot for a few years. Back when you were footloose and fancy free, you never used that celebrity thing, gave it a go?”

He might have said anything in response to Ron’s joking around. He might have pointed out that most women found his fame intimidating rather than titillating; being known for killing a notorious dark wizard wasn’t quite the same as being a pop star. He might have made a joke in return, made up some fantastical four-way with the Weird Sisters to make Ron laugh. He might have asked whether it was true that Cho and her Muggle husband had split up, and if so how long ago, and should he consider calling her?

Instead Harry shrugged and said, “I’ve only ever been to bed with two women in my whole life. Hermione and Ginny, that’s it. And I’m 36 years old. The thought of starting over from scratch – it’s terrifying.”

Silence.

Harry realized he and Ron had never actually talked about it, though there had been times during Voldemort’s fall that he’d thought he felt the weight of it between them like a physical force. Obviously this hadn’t been the time to open the subject for discussion. Glancing down at the table, Harry said, “Sorry. Awkward. Shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Ron’s voice squeaked the way it used to when he was a boy as he said, “… Hermione?”

“Um – yeah?” Harry looked up to see that Ron looked almost white. The truth hit him in a flash of almost blinding shock. “Oh, my God. She never told you.”

They stared at one another in silence for a few seconds. Ron’s breaths came quicker and quicker, as if his body was trying to decide between tears and rage but couldn’t quite do it. “My best friend slept with my wife.”

“Whoa. It was twenty years ago, Ron. Before you were married. Before you were dating. I always believed – I was just sure Hermione must’ve told you. I swear, I thought you knew.”

“Before we were dating?” Ron sat up straighter, and his hands were clenched so tightly around his glass that his knuckles were white. “You mean, it was you. You’re the first one she had sex with.”

How had he not known? Harry couldn’t make his mind bridge the gap between what he’d believed and reality. “Who did you think it was? Did you and Hermione seriously not talk about this, ever?”

“No! I thought it must’ve been Victor Krum!”

“Victor Krum?” It was so absurd that Harry wanted to laugh, though that had more to do with nerves than any actual humor. “Ron, come on, don’t get upset.”

Unsurprisingly, Ron ignored this. “And you never told Ginny.”

“Of course I told Ginny. I told her almost as soon as we were back together. She always understood. Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”

“So everyone knew but me. Everyone! Bloody hell.” Ron’s anger was getting the better of his pain. “Before we were dating, you said. Do you mean – back at Hogwarts, or was it – was it after I left?”

No need for Ron to elaborate: Harry knew precisely when he meant. For a few seconds, he felt the chill of the moors in December, saw the bleak gray sky overhead and felt the hollow of hunger in his belly. Hermione stood next to him, waiting and waiting for Ron to return to them, before she whisked them away beyond any following. To be safe from Voldemort, they thought they had to leave Ron behind forever. That had felt so real – the division between what they wanted and what would be.

“Yes,” Harry said. “It was after you left. Just one night, that’s all – ”

“Just one night!” Ron shot back. “Do you hear yourself? You slept with Hermione, my wife, and she never once shared that with me in twenty bloody years and you want to act like it’s no big deal?”

“We were lonely and scared.” The darkness of the tent, the desperate pounding of his heart in his chest, Hermione leaning her head against his shoulder as he tentatively put his arm around her: Harry hadn’t thought about it in years, hadn’t let himself think about it, and was shocked to find the memory so vivid. “You remember how it was. Expecting to die any day, just about any second, and Hermione and I – that’s all we had, each other.”

“Because I left, you mean.” Ron grabbed his coat from the hooks at the end of the booth. “Waited a while to throw that in my face, didn’t you, Harry?”

“I’ve never done that, and you know it. Come on, mate; don’t make this more than it is.”

As Ron rose and tugged his coat on, he said, “If it was no big deal, then why didn’t she tell me?”

Harry couldn’t give Ron an answer he didn’t have. After another moment’s pained silence, Ron turned and stormed out of the pub. Bells on the door jangled as he left.

For a few seconds, Harry could only rest his head in his hand. The overwhelming combination of remorse and astonishment – he could imagine it was similar to the last thoughts of people who died tripping over unexploded ordnance from the London Blitz thirty years after the fact.

Pulling himself together, he tugged on his own coat and stepped out onto the street. A nearby winding lane almost too narrow for traffic seemed likely to be quiet, so Harry walked along it as he reached into his pocket. There was no owlery anywhere close by in this Muggle neighborhood, nor a fireplace connected to the Floo network. Thank goodness the Wizarding World had adapted to the 21st century and he could use the Web.

And of course he had a live charge, because he always took good care of Zipporah.

Harry pulled his Gossamer 80X from his pocket; the silver frame shone in the light from the streetlamps, just bright enough to reveal Zipporah’s eight legs working away as she spun. When the filaments were complete, the Web glowed, and Harry said, “Call Hermione.”

Another glow, as his breath fogged the cold night air, and then Hermione’s face appeared on the screen. Her hair was a mess, and an ink stain marred one cheek: Of course, she had a bill in revision at the Ministry. The warm smile she gave him broke his heart. “Hullo! Are you two still out and about?”

“No. Hermione, I’m sorry. I’ve messed up.”

Her smile dimmed only slightly. “Is Ron drunk?”

“Not when I saw him last.” Though it was anyone’s guess what condition Ron would be in when the night was through. Harry took a deep breath. “We were talking, and somehow we got on the subject, and – I never knew you hadn’t told him. About us. You know.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. It felt as if he had wounded her; Harry hated that feeling. She whispered, “Oh, Harry, you didn’t.”

“He’s upset. I mean, really upset. I told him how it was, but he isn’t in a mood to listen. I thought you should be prepared before he heads home.”

“Damn it. _Damn_ it. How did you end up talking about – no. It doesn’t matter. Oh, Ron. If only he’d call.” Hermione bit her lip. They both knew that Ron, loathing spiders as he did, wouldn’t hear of carrying a Gossamer in his pocket. “What did he say?”

“He was kind of all over the place. Mostly I think he was convinced that it had to be more than I was letting on, because you’d never told him.” Harry felt as if he shouldn’t ask the rest, but the question came out anyway: “Hermione – why didn’t you?”

She didn’t respond, and for a moment it was difficult to face her, even through a Gossamer screen. Unspoken words seemed to fill all the space between the warm home she sat in and the cold silent street where he stood.

When Hermione finally spoke, she didn’t answer him. She said only, “Thanks for calling. I’ll let you know how things go.”

“Look after him. He’s in bad shape.” Remembering Ron’s pained face lanced Harry even more sharply than the actual moment had; then, he’d been numbed by astonishment, but now nothing stood between him and the fact that he’d brutally hurt one of his best friends in the world.

“Of course I will.”

“I’m sorry.” For telling Ron. For not finding out what she had and hadn’t told Ron. For turning to her on a rainy, mournful night twenty years ago.

“I’ll let you know,” was all she said before the screen went dim.

As he always did, Harry tapped the feeder tube to reward Zipporah for a good connection. While the spider scurried for her snack, he slipped his Gossamer back into his pocket. Although he had no reason to continue down this street, no real idea where it led, he kept walking. Lily was sleeping over at a friend’s, and home was the last place he wanted to be. Harry needed some time to think.

Some time with his memories.

**

They’d been so bloody scared; that was the thing that stood out most so many years later. Scared of dying, scared of capture, scared they’d never see anyone else they loved again, scared that when the end came there would be no chance for goodbyes. And scared of one another, in some ways.

How raw he’d felt the first time Hermione had seen him naked.

How her entire body shook as he settled over her on the cot.

If it happened for any one reason, it happened because the terror of having sex for the first time was at least something different to be frightened of.

But once they were past that … Harry forgot about the war, Voldemort, everyone who had already died. For the minutes they spent locked in each other’s embrace, he forgot anything but their frantic kisses, the half-hurting, half-happy sound Hermione made as he pushed into her, and the unbelievable, ecstatic heat of being inside a woman for the first time. It all happened so fast – absurdly fast, but he was just a boy and excited beyond control – and yet he could never forget how good and right it had felt to lay the world aside.

Though that part of it he might have done better to forget.

**

The next morning he received an owl from Hermione; her shaky handwriting belied the calm phrases. _Had a thundering row_ and _no doubt the firewhisky_ and _he’ll see reason_ and _don’t come around for a bit_. It was as if he and Ron had had an especially bitter argument about the Chudley Cannons’ latest trade.

But maybe she was right. Maybe in the end it didn’t add up to more than that. It shouldn’t. A quarter of an hour in a bed so long ago shouldn’t undermine a friendship well into its third decade.

Harry tried to put it aside and threw himself into his work. The Aurors were busy with a new cursing mechanism that worked at a distance; it was surprising the number of witches and wizards who didn’t think a curse really counted if they weren’t in the room when it was thrown. He went in early, took work home, did research on his lunch breaks. And yet he still felt the weight of every day that crawled on without Ron or Hermione getting in touch.

When the weekend came, he left the office in plenty of time to get Lily ready for her weekend at her mum’s. Packing a lime-and-lilac knapsack with three days’ worth of clothes and a My Little Centaur took his mind off his troubles well enough. By the time Ginny arrived, he was feeling nearly cheerful.

“Here’s my girl!” Ginny wrapped her arms around Lily and rocked her back and forth. “I’ve got us tickets to the Muggle ballet, just like you wanted.” As Lily squealed in excitement, Harry and Ginny’s eyes met for the shared joke; Harry knew full well that Ginny would just about as soon watch paint dry as the ballet, but seeing their daughter happy made it worthwhile.

“Oh, wait!” Lily cried. “Then I want my sequined headband to go with my dress.”

“Run up and get it.” Harry swatted her gently on the shoulder as she bounded for the stairs. To Ginny he said, “Heroic of you.”

“Well, you took on coaching Baby Brooms Quidditch. I figured I’d spot you one.” Her eyes assessed him, suddenly cool. This change in temperature was all too familiar. But her voice remained even. “I hear you’re in deep trouble.”

“Ron told you.” When she nodded, Harry continued, “And you explained, right? That you’d always known?”

“Of course I did. Only made him madder. Then Mum stepped in – ”

“Good Lord.” Harry didn’t like the idea of Mrs. Weasley knowing about his sex life, though he was aware mothers and daughters did talk. Worse by far was the thought of her trying to referee this mess.

“Well, I confided in her about you and Hermione way back when, and he’s furious because absolutely everybody knew but him. Mum keeps telling him exactly what I told her. You two were just alone too long. You both needed somebody and you didn’t have anyone else. Didn’t mean a thing beyond that.” This ought to have been good news. But something about the way Ginny said it put Harry on guard. She studied him more intently than she had in a very long time; it was as if he were blinking in a spotlight’s glare. “Don’t worry. I didn’t say what I really thought.”

At least half the reason their marriage had failed was because Harry never could resist taking the bait. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She tucked a lock of her fiery hair behind one ear. “Hermione’s always the one you talk to first. Always was. Before me, before Ron.”

“We’re _friends._ Best friends.”

“You always hug her a little longer. You always laugh at her jokes, and she’s not that funny, you know. Everything she does is ‘brilliant,’ or ‘clever’ or ‘marvelous.’ The look you got in your eyes when you spoke about all that time alone with Hermione way back when – I told myself someday you’d look at me like that. I waited and waited. Finally I stopped waiting.”

 _Do you honestly think I never loved you?_ That wasn’t true, wasn’t anywhere close to true. But saying it wasn’t going to help the situation. “You’re imagining things.”

“I’m not. I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life feeling like I’ve been – like I’ve been taking care of someone else’s dog. He likes you and he wags his tail for you but the minute you leave the door open too long, he’s going to break for home, and he’ll never look back.” Ginny breathed out sharply. “I know you didn’t cheat on me. I know Hermione would never. And I’m not telling my brother a word of this; it would only hurt him more. But if you honestly think there’s nothing to what I’m saying, ask yourself why Hermione never said a word. To her husband, the person she loves the most in the world. Ask yourself.”

“This is ridiculous,” Harry said, even as his mind started turning her words over and over, seeking reason, seeing patterns.

Ginny shrugged. “Didn’t expect you to start listening to me now.” Then she breathed out, frustrated no longer with him but with herself. “I’m doing that thing the counselor said not to do. Stirring it up. I’m sorry.”

Harry found himself concentrating too hard on the knapsack, double-checking the zippers and pockets. “The entire situation’s been blown out of proportion.”

“You’ve been good about it, really. You’ve never said a word. And with us – it’s as much my fault as yours. I let you pretend. You wouldn’t have been able to convince yourself if I hadn’t helped you do it.” Ginny’s voice was soft with something it took him a moment to recognize as pity. “I just hate that we wasted so much of each other’s time.”

“It wasn’t a waste,” Harry said, looking down at their daughter’s knapsack in his hands. He’d charmed silver stars onto the straps.

“No. I guess it wasn’t.”

Then Lily’s feet pounded on the stairs as she came back down, and by the time she dashed back into the room with her headband, both her parents had smiles on their faces for her.

**

They’d been so shy the next morning, even though they’d awakened naked in each other’s arms. Harry had wrapped their blanket around Hermione, sacrificing his privacy for hers, and she’d given him an uncertain little smile that pierced him through.

And yet once they were dressed again, everything went back to normal, except better than normal. The danger remained. The fear still hung over them. But just that one night when he’d been able to lay the world aside had given him back his strength when he needed it most.

This was where the gratitude began: Harry always knew Hermione didn’t care for him that way, that she had her heart set on Ron. So when they’d had sex, she’d been giving him something precious and irreplaceable – all because he needed that sense of connection.

At first he felt terribly guilty about it, almost as if he might have bullied her, which was absurd; it was Hermione who had whispered the words, had first slipped out of her shirt. Harry found himself watching her very carefully. Did she regret what she’d done? Was her mood any better than it had been before? Could they still talk as they had before?

Paying closer attention led to other things, too. Like Harry noticing just how much Hermione did for him, and stepping in to do some of those tasks himself – and even to look after her, sometimes. He began making the tea and straightening the tent. Feeling grateful to her, remembering passion for her, turned out to be a sort of kindling for a fire that had been built slowly, over a very long time, but had until then lacked a spark. Her fussier moods began to gently amuse him. Her courage in standing by his side amazed Harry all over again. Sometimes he found himself watching her from across the tent while she slept.

By the time he’d begun to realize just how much had changed that night, Ron returned. Harry was so glad to see his other best friend – and so preoccupied by the desperate battles they were fighting – that he didn’t get around to really examining how he felt about Ron and Hermione. He didn’t even realize it might have been a good idea to say something to Hermione until it was far too late to speak, and so he pushed it aside.

Forever, he’d thought.

But forever is a long time.

**

A week turned into two weeks, which turned into a month. Harry hadn’t gone so long without seeing Ron and Hermione since they were all children. He and Hermione exchanged a few owls, with him always asking how things were, and her always replying that they were tense, to give it more time.

Their notes became stilted, too tactful, and far-between; it was as if the playful owls they’d always exchanged a few times a week had somehow been transmogrified into evidence of a crime, and now they were afraid of getting caught.

This meant he had to find other ways to fill his free hours. He met up with Seamus Finnegan for a meal one evening; another weekend he went to Hogsmeade to have dinner with James and then spend half the night sitting up with Neville, telling old stories as if they were new, and getting roaring drunk. Nothing like waking up hung over in the Shrieking Shack to remind you how young you weren’t. As he did every few years or so, he got together with Dudley – this was always awkward, never really satisfying, and yet Harry liked that they didn’t give it up. One Saturday when he was truly at wits’ end, he decided to accept the invitation he’d been dutifully sent to meet up with the Slytherin Quidditch team parents’ booster organization. Honestly, it had been worth it just to see their faces when he walked into the Serpent Club. Draco had been the stiffest of them all, at least until the conversation turned to pro teams, and it turned out he and Harry agreed that the last Puddlemere United win was utter rubbish, that the referee must have been bought, and their mutual denouncing of everyone involved was so enjoyable that they kept it up even after the meeting ended and even walked each other to the nearest Floo station before they’d noticed it.

In the unlikely event that any of these people knew of the situation Harry, Ron and Hermione were in, none of them let on. Finally, he learned the big news from Lily.

“Be careful.” Harry’s hands hovered only a few inches away from the cheese grater. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have me handle it?”

“I can do it,” she insisted. As she started rubbing the mozzarella across the grater, he forced himself to pull back a bit, but her movements were unpracticed and jerky. He couldn’t quite shake the thought of tiny hands being grated atop their pizza.

“Even strokes. All right.” He took a deep breath. “Hey, after dinner, we should get you packed for Gran and Gramps’ house this weekend.”

“Okay.” Lily continued scrubbing the cheese into the grater, keeping a good grip on it. Her rounded face was set in determination. “I want to take my tent.”

That surprised him. His daughter, unlike her earthier parents or either of her elder brothers, preferred fancy to plain, ceremony to casualness, and indoors to out. “Your tent? It’s cold for camping.”

“We can _spell_ it, Dad, come _on_.”

“I know, I know.”

“Besides, it’s going to be crowded. Dominique and Louis are coming to visit from Beauxbatons, and Mum’s staying most of the weekend, Hugo too, and now that Uncle Ron’s living there it’s like there’s not even anyplace to sit. So I thought I could camp out in the tent. Gran would help me make it cozy, and maybe I could have a picnic.”

“Mmmm.” Harry kept his voice very calm. “Uncle Ron’s staying at the Burrow?”

“Yeah.” Lily’s hands stilled. “Dad – are Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione getting a divorce too?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But that’s how it started with you and Mum. With her always going to the Burrow.”

“It’s nothing to do with the Burrow.” Harry took the cheese and grater from his daughter and put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you upset about it?”

“No,” she said, then promptly put her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his shoulder, the way she had done when she needed comfort ever since she was a baby. Harry rocked her back and forth, stroking her hair, feeling like hell. If only there were some enchantment that could keep adult problems from affecting children. If only Lily could be sealed off in some happier place, kept safe from such stupid things.

He found himself thinking of Albus Dumbledore, and the way he’d let Harry have the run of Hogwarts those first few years. The House Cup for Gryffindor: It had been a small token to a boy he’d believed to be destined for a young and terrible death. Trying to imagine how Dumbledore must have felt then, looking down at a Harry only two years older than Lily was now, brought a lump to his throat.

Harry finally said, “Does Uncle Ron seem – well, all right to you?”

“Yeah.” Lily let go and pushed her hair back from her face, a sign she was calming down. “He says he’ll help me de-gnome the garden. He makes up such funny names for them!”

Ron hadn’t let any of this change how he felt toward Lily. Harry would have expected no less, but he was on the verge of getting emotional in front of his daughter, which wouldn’t do. “See? You’ll have fun this weekend. Come on, let’s get this pizza in the oven.”

After dinner, packing for the Burrow and a full chapter of THE HORSE AND HIS BOY, Harry got Lily into bed. He went downstairs, poured himself a glass of wine and grabbed a piece of paper. He wrote only, _Ron moved out_? Then he strapped it to Otho’s leg and let his owl fly out into the night.

Otho returned before the wine was finished. The return letter said, _I don’t understand what’s going on much better than you do. Can we talk? Maybe lunch Saturday at one of your Muggle places._

Harry thought of somewhere and jotted the address down as he stroked Otho’s feathers as a reward for a late night’s hard work. His heart seemed to be beating very fast.

**

He’d chosen a café in Marylebone, one that seemed to be half conservatory, with its broad glass wall and endless plants and flowers in every corner. Harry had wandered into it one day about a year ago with some fellow Aurors and always remembered it as a relaxing sort of place.

As he sat at a corner table, waiting for Hermione, he wondered if he hadn’t chosen it for the enormous windows – to prove they had nothing to hide.

Prove to whom?

Then Hermione walked in, the cream-colored trenchcoat she wore made appropriate for the February chill by the addition of a thick, sea-green scarf wrapped around her neck. Harry couldn’t help smiling as she came closer. “Well, this is new.”

“Oh, right.” Her fingers went to her short-short hair, now sleek around her face. “You wouldn’t have seen me since. What do you think? The kids hate it.”

“You look beautiful.” Which was entirely the kind of thing he would have said to her at any time, but it felt different now. Their eyes met, then didn’t, as he rose to greet her. Her usual kiss ghosted against his cheek.

They made small talk as they ordered salad, soup and wine. Clouds filtered the sunlight, so everything seemed to be the same pale washed gray except the deep blue of his sweater and the green of her scarf. Only when it was obvious the waitress would leave them alone for a bit did Harry finally say, “Is Ron still at the Burrow?”

“For now.” Hermione stared down at her soup, face pale and drawn. It reminded him of how she’d so often looked that terrible winter on the moors.

“I can’t believe he’d move out just because – well, just because of that.”

“It’s not just that. Since Rose went to school, we’ve found ourselves ... I don’t know. Bickering. I mean, more than usual.”

Harry laughed, though the joke wasn’t that funny. Then he remembered Ginny’s stinging words, and the smile fell from his face.

Hermione continued, “Too much time on our hands to worry about trivial things, I suppose. It’s been tense. But nothing I thought we couldn’t work through.”

Not just because of him, then. Harry took a deeper drink of his wine than was probably advisable. “I wish you’d told me it had got this bad.”

“I didn’t think it had. Then Ron found out about us, and everything boiled over, and you were the person I couldn’t talk to.” She was blinking quickly; her fingers toyed with her scarf, nervous energy with nowhere to go. “But you were the only person I wanted to talk to.”

The one question that dwarfed all the others rose again, and Harry didn’t even try to hold it back: “Why didn’t you ever tell him?”

“There never seemed to be a good time.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I suppose it’s not.” Hermione looked at him then almost defiantly. It was as if she was daring him to push harder. Wanting him to.

Harry looked across the table at her, misty and grey. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to get farther away from her. And he understood for the first time that you couldn’t get over something if you didn’t admit there was something to get over.

He’d never admitted that he needed to get over Hermione. So he never had.

How could twenty years feel like both a lifetime and a split second at once? Harry could hardly imagine that he’d lived all this time on one path, on one track he’d taken, and yet this parallel track had been beside him the whole while. Jumping over was possible. Switching tracks. Doing everything differently, embracing something he’d tried to hide so well that he’d nearly hidden it from himself. And there was joy there, real joy waiting for them both, maybe passion too –

Also there was Lily’s worried little face, afraid the adults she loved most were all abandoning each other. Molly knitting her ex-son-in-law an orange jumper with as much care as she gave the ones she made for her children. Albus and Rose as toddlers with their toy brooms, taking lessons from Ginny on how to fly. Ron sitting beside him on the Hogwarts Express with Scabbers in his cage – rubbing Harry’s shoulder the one time Harry broke down about the divorce in front of him – borne aloft on the shoulders of students chanting “Weasley is our king” – proudly nestling baby Hugo in Harry’s arms for the first time – crying as they heard Hermione scream in pain when they were imprisoned by Bellatrix Lestrange – always, at the darkest and brightest moments of Harry’s life, always Ron.

And always Hermione too, so inexpressibly precious to him, and yet so hurt now, so wounded. Whatever she felt or didn’t – whatever reason she had for never sharing this truth with her husband – it didn’t matter. She never asked to jump tracks. She loved the life she had. This situation, with everything turned upside down – it was something Harry did to her, accidentally and unknowingly but his work all the same.

Once Harry made it up to her by fixing cups of tea, and tidying the tent. Maybe he could do better this time.

He smiled gently. “I’ll talk to Ron.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Hermione said. “He’s been an absolute bear ever since.”

“Listen, if he gets mad enough at me, maybe he’ll forget to be mad at you too.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Honestly, Harry, you ought to know better by now.” Her scolding tone was so familiar; next, Harry thought, she’d ask him if he still hadn’t read HOGWARTS: A HISTORY. He couldn’t resist a smile.

“We’ll put this right, Hermione. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” She leaned back slightly in her chair. Everything about her was more relaxed now; the danger had passed, and they both knew it. But Harry suspected the wistfulness in her eyes was reflected in his own.

He’d never walk down that other path, but he’d never forget where it might have led.

**

Two nights later, Harry went to a pub he’d been steering clear of for a while now. They had the latest Chudley Cannons game on the Wizarding Wireless, which was why Harry suspected he’d strike pay dirt.

He did. Ron was sitting by himself in a corner booth, so intent on the match and the chips and ale in front of him that he didn’t notice Harry coming up until Harry smacked him alongside the head. “Oi!” Ron yelped, just like his 13-year-old self, until his eyes widened at the sight of Harry.

“You’re being an enormous git.” Harry slid into the opposite bench. “Don’t you think it’s about time you knocked it off?”

“Nobody asked you – ”

“Since when did we start waiting for invitations before we gave each other advice? Listen to me – git. Enormous. You. Stop it. Hermione says you’ve been off your head about this.”

“Oh, so you and Hermione are talking now? Meeting up behind my back?”

“Meeting up for lunch, and talking via owl, the exact same way we have since we were all first-years at Hogwarts. Don’t go turning it into a big deal now.” Advice for both of them, really.

It was obvious that Ron had been caught off guard by Harry’s arrival, so much so that he was struggling to find his anger – as though he’d misplaced it somewhere. “If it’s no big deal, then why didn’t Hermione ever tell me about it?”

Any real curiosity Harry had about that question was in the process of being forgotten. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because she thought you’d overreact like some stupid wanker? No idea where she got that from. Honestly, Ron, if you’re carrying on like this two decades later – two decades, mind, more than half our lives – what would you have done if she had told you way back when? Broken it off with her, most likely. With me too. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the way our lives would have looked without each other in them.”

Ron stared down at his chips for a moment. His expression was more sad than anything else, and Harry wondered if he’d been too harsh. Usually that was the best way to get through to any Weasley, but he could overdo it, as his divorce from Ginny proved.

Finally Ron said, “Do you know what the worst part is?”

“Tell me.”

“That stuff Voldemort showed me. When he was trying to get me not to destroy the horcrux.” Ron dabbed one of his chips disconsolately in the catsup. “I always thought it was rot. But it was true, wasn’t it?”

Harry could only shrug and admit it. “That’s a big part of why I thought you always knew.”

“I thought it was just some bad dream he was trying to show me. You two in love.”

“We were never in love. So that part really was just a bad dream.”

Leaning back in his booth, Ron stared at the ceiling. Over the speakers, the crowd cheered madly as the Holyrood Harpies scored yet another goal on the hapless Cannons. “It’s been weird lately for me and Hermione. Not just about you.”

“You have to adjust when the kids go off to school. It can be done.”

“You and Ginny didn’t make it.”

“I think it’s going to be different for you and Hermione. If you don’t turn this into something more than it is.”

“Bit late for that.” Ron groaned. “Hermione’s furious.”

“She’s worried. That’s all. Get together with her for dinner. You’ll set things right.”

It wasn’t that simple, of course, but Harry could feel the path being laid. Ron was already calming down, already telling Harry his troubles again. Soon it would all be as if it had never happened.

They listened to the rest of the game together, speaking of nothing more substantial than the piss-poor performance by the Cannons, who were ultimately routed by the Harpies 17-0. Harry walked Ron to the Floo, took the Muggle bus home, and after some consideration, decided not to ring Hermione up on the Gossamer. Ron would be in touch with her soon enough. When he got home, he reached into his wallet and took out the number he’d gotten last week – Cho’s Gossamer. Apparently she was indeed divorced from her Muggle husband, for almost a year now. The time wasn’t right yet to call her, Harry thought, but he thought that day might come soon.


End file.
